


The Light of No Sun

by Tlon



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: 60 percent hurt / 20 percent comfort / 20 percent fight scenes?, Angst, Broken Bones, Canon-Typical Violence, Captivity, Carmilla Is Her Own Warning, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Gaslighting, Hurt/Comfort, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Past Child Abuse, Post-Season 2, Psychological Torture, Rescue, Solitary Confinement, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Torture, Unhealthy Relationships, Whump, no cute zombie pets sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-19 15:10:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17004006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tlon/pseuds/Tlon
Summary: After the failed coup against Dracula, Hector is forced to follow Carmilla to her kingdom in Styria. She needs him – he's the one who can forge her an army. And the moment she turns her back, he will find a way to betray her. But every move he makes, she seems to anticipate. Every horror he suffers, she seems ready to do worse. He may not leave her castle sane. He may not leave it alive. But he clings to one conviction:He is not prey.Or, a short post-Season 2 that got away from me a little.





	1. On the Road

**Author's Note:**

> In which yr. author attempts further reconciliation between the fearless deadpan snarker characterization of Hector in Netflix's _Castlevania_ and the "Carmilla breaks Hector like a necromantic Fabergé egg" _Castlevania_ fanfiction subgenre. I have probably accidentally mistaken some details from **FallLover's** _Long Days and Nights Ahead_ for canon.

_“What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets.” - Dracula_

* * *

The road from Braila smells of death.

Death is Hector's oldest companion, but not like this. He meets death in his home and on his terms, where it can serve him. This is death unchained: wild, inevitable emptiness. No one will resurrect _this_ bloodied man in the mud, _that_ woman wedged impossibly into a gap between houses, her limp hair still wet from the river's surge. Not even Isaac, who must certainly be gone – nothing could have killed Dracula without cutting through him first.

An honest demise. How enviable.

Hector steps over a sprawled corpse. He pauses, almost unconsciously, to glance at the shattered geometry of its face. Then the chain at his neck jerks him forward, and he stumbles, barely keeping his footing as Carmilla pulls him inexorably toward her home.

Carmilla flicks her head back and catches his eye – the one she hasn't swollen shut with her fists. “Not flagging already... are we, pet?”

Hector grits his teeth and looks down at the dirt. He can still feel her icy fingers against his cheek, holding him still as she mocked him earlier. How could he have been so stupid, to think her loyal to anyone but herself?

But now... how can she be so stupid, as to think the same about him?

 _My pet forgemaster._ As though he has any reason to build her an army. As though she has any way to ensure his loyalty. Dracula sought him out and gave him purpose – and Hector still turned on him. Carmilla can hope she's beaten him into submission, and trust that the creatures he makes will follow her commands. Neither one will be a wise decision.

Carmilla's collar pinches the back of his neck, and with bound hands he can't work the skin free. He settles for sliding his fingertips between the metal and his throat, producing a brief illusion of freedom.

He wonders how long they have until daylight.

***

His boots aren't built for travel. They raise blisters on his feet, and then the blisters burst, and their fluid glues his raw skin to the knit of his stockings. He feels every line of the cobbler's work like a knife. It's almost a relief when exhaustion turns his legs wooden, and he can feel only undifferentiated pain.

It's been a long time since he knew darkness, Hector realizes. Not the gray of a stone cell, but the smothering black of a forest night. He remembers finding it comforting once – observing the animals that played and slept and died in the dark, collecting their small bodies for his forge before dawn. But he's been too long in the castle. And there's no comfort in knowing that Carmilla is at the height of her strength, probably panting for an excuse to hit him again.

By the time he can see again Braila is long gone, and the road is little more than a muddy suggestion. He wonders if she'll give him any... raw forging material while they're traveling, or if he'll have to wait until Styria to make his move – or he could kill a guard, perhaps, while they rest in the day? He plots the steps of impossible escapes, because at least it keeps his mind off all the miseries of his flesh.

He's successful enough to not realize they've stopped until Carmilla slides off her horse and pulls his chain short. He drops to his knees and chokes off a cry of pain, keeping his good eye fixed straight ahead.

Carmilla pricks his temple with a fingernail. She traces his rising bruises and stops at his chin, forcing his gaze upward.

“Did you have a nice walk?”

She laughs girlishly at her own feeble joke. Hector waits, wondering if she expects him to reply. But she only drops her hand and summons one of her lackeys. The man – human, he notes, if pale – drives a spike through one of the chain links into the chilly earth. It pulls Hector to the ground, and the man chains his ankles together and reties his hands behind his back.

“Get a good day's rest,” says Carmilla. “It's more than a fortnight to Styria... or two, at your pace.”

***

Carmilla and her fellow monsters melt into the woods as the sun rises, and Hector is left with the sole human of the group. He ignores Hector, and Hector decides it's better that way – especially if he knows that Hector has spent the last year planning the violent end of this man alongside everyone he's ever met.

The idea sounds absurd now, and not only because Hector is recalling it while curled pitifully around the spike, trying to keep himself warm. How could Dracula have possibly found – or even known where to find – every person in the world? How great an army could two men build, corpse by corpse, within a human lifespan? It had all made so much sense in the presence of the titan Hector joined a year ago, but not the man who had barely taken a single city before he fell.

 _Perhaps he wouldn't have fallen,_ Hector reminds himself, _if he'd had two loyal generals instead of one._

He must sleep at some point, because his legs are unbound and Carmilla is pulling at his chain and he can't remember how she got there.

“Come,” she says brusquely. “Don't slow us down.”

Hector sits up and tries to follow her, but his limbs are too stiff and cold to straighten. She watches him with apparent amusement, and something in him cracks.

“I won't walk,” he says, getting the words out before he can stop himself.

Carmilla raises her eyebrows.

“I won't walk,” he repeats, louder. “Let me ride with one of your soldiers. If you want to build an army, there's no point wasting days just to torture me –”

She kicks him sharply in the ribs, and he doubles over. “You think you can give orders, pet?” Her voice is chillingly even, like the thunk of a guillotine. “I could cut off your feet, if you aren't using them.”

“You could.” Hector forces himself to look at her. “But I don't see any surgeons or antiseptics. It's a bit risky to bet on my survival – unless you think I can resurrect myself.”

“Who says I care about your survival?”

Hector isn't sure _he_ cares about his survival anymore – he must not, to be speaking to her like this.

“You did. _Repeatedly._ ”

Carmilla pauses for a moment, and Hector realizes her soldiers are fixed on their conversation. Then she runs a hand through her hair and grins.

“How clever!” Her voice is too loud, too careless. “And so I did. But you seem determined to make yourself useless.”

“I'll do your work, if you just listen to –”

Before he can finish, she flicks the chain with inhuman strength, dragging him up. He tumbles forward, hands still tied, unable to break his fall. He tries to get up, but her heel comes down between his shoulder blades, driving him back to the ground.

“ _I_ will do as I please. If you won't, I have no use for you.”

She kicks his ribs again, and this time he feels a searing snap in his chest. She puts a knee in his back and yanks his head back by his hair, laughing when he screams.

“I could kill you in an instant, Hector – _pet_. But I think I'll turn you, first.” She feigns contemplation. “Our kind is strong, you know. You could survive so much more pain before you passed... so many broken bones and missing parts. So many hours not quite burning in the sunlight. Every moment knowing that if you did escape, your skills would no longer serve you – no forgemaster as a vampire, only a shadow of your mistress...” Her voice has quickened, and Hector can feel the vibrations of it in his ear. “And when I finally allow you to die, in what small part of your mind remains, you may think you have denied me something. But that is because you are _prey_ , and you cannot imagine the exquisite pleasure of having broken another creature so completely.”

She notches her wrist efficiently, and from the corner of his eye, he watches the blood swell from her ashen skin. “It's not an end I might choose,” she tells him. “But who am I to deny you...”

As she raises her wrist to his lips, he flinches, and he knows she's won. “No – please no,” he chokes out, his voice cracking.

Carmilla laughs. “So you see something in humanity after all. Don't waste my time again.”

***

Hector walks again, and now his pain is mixed with terror. He doesn't dare pause even when their horses slow, because if he stops he's not sure he'll be able to move again. It's not Carmilla's words that stick with him. It's the ravenous excitement he heard in her voice, the willingness to throw away any kind of rational advantage in the name of bloodlust.

This country is nothing but rocks and fucking trees. He sees a fox once, but it flees at the sound of hoofbeats – lucky creature.

Carmilla stops them just before dawn.

“Not feeling conversational?” she asks Hector after his chain is staked tight into a hulking beech trunk. “You had so much to say last night.”

He's too tired to even shudder when she strokes his cheek. He's faint with hunger and hasn't had a drink of anything since Braila, and he's got just enough resolve to keep from begging for food and water. Not to preserve his dignity – devil knows that's long gone – but because he suspects she would deny him, and he'd be even worse off for having considered the possibility.

The sun barely penetrates the forest to warm him, and the chain keeps him on his feet. His blisters have been rubbed raw so many times that he can feel crusted blood against his toes. His suit is dull with grime and damp with sweat. He drifts unconscious over and over, waking each time his head drops and the collar chokes him.

He can't possibly keep this up until Styria. He's never had to rely on his own body like this, never mind in a situation where he's been so powerless.

The human guard spends most of the day sleeping. When he wakes, he eyes Hector with mild curiosity and approaches him.

“So you're what a devilmaster looks like.”

Hector looks up. “Forgemaster,” he croaks. “We're _forgemasters_.”

The guard grabs Hector's face and examines him. “I can see it – the abyss in your eyes.”

That's nonsense, but his throat is too parched to say anything about it.

“Could you train somebody to do it?”

Hector shakes his head, staving off dizziness.

“Are you born with it, then?”

He nods faintly.

The guard drops his hold. “Guess I can't blame you, then.”

“For what?” Hector asks, against his better judgment.

“For being born a monster.”

It should be insulting but somehow it's only funny – the way this _vampire's soldier_ calls him a monster like it's supposed to be a kindness, like Hector is supposed to be grateful for the pity. He laughs, and coughs, and laughs, until the guard backhands him so hard it bloodies his nose. And then Hector is alone, braced against the tree and still laughing, tears of something – pain, despair, hysteria – trickling down his face.

***

That night Hector decides he should have appreciated the rocks and trees, because now it's rocks and trees and fucking _hills_. Carmilla loosens the ties on his wrists, but he can't find his footing like the horses. He scrabbles desperately to keep the pace, trying to ignore the dim spots that have started to cloud his vision.

He doesn't see the root that catches his foot. But as he starts to tumble down the incline, he feels it: a sharp, wrong turn of his ankle, gathering all the pain in his body into a single point.

The chain goes slack, and Hector hears Carmilla's feet hit the ground. This is it, then. She's about to make good on her threats, because however hurt he is, he's sure she'll think he did it to spite her.

As she leans close, he promises himself that he won't cry. Not yet, at least.

But there's no kick this time, no insults. She frees his foot gently and slips an arm under his shoulders, helping him sit up. When he cringes, she ignores it. And when she speaks, there's barely any mockery in her voice.

“Poor boy,” she whispers. “You can't go on like this.”

She's stroking his hair.

“Help him up,” she tells one of her soldiers. “He can ride with me to the next village. We'll rest early tonight.”

Someone else's hands are on him, firm but not cruel. They're easing him to his feet, helping him while Carmilla mounts her horse and pulls him up to join her, sheltering him with her cloak.

“You're not going... to turn me,” he mumbles, trying not to fall. “You're not going to kill me.”

She tweaks the reins and wraps his chain around her arm.

“Where on earth would you get that idea? I _need_ you, Hector. I care for you.” She holds him close, keeping him steady as the horses resume their ascent. “In fact, I think I'm the only one who does.”

That isn't right, but he's far too tired to think about it. He lets the rhythm of hoof beats put him to sleep.


	2. At the Palace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hector learns the rules of his new relationship with Carmilla. Somewhere outside, a new war begins.

Hector comes around eventually, as the forest hills flatten into an expanse of tilled land. Carmilla is leading her survivors toward a light in the distance; a farmhouse, Hector sees, as they get closer. She stops them at a fence.

“You wait here, darling,” she murmurs into Hector's ear. “We have some housekeeping to attend to.”

He can barely hear the screaming that comes after.

Carmilla reappears eventually, blood-spattered and incandescent. She opens a gate and leads the horse through it, as though Hector is a child just learning to ride. She even remembers which ankle he's injured, helping him off the saddle from his good – or at least, less hopelessly broken – side.

He still falls to his hands and knees as soon as he's off, unable to support his own weight. It's as though his body no longer knows which direction gravity pulls. His terror gave him strength before, but he's too confused and exhausted to hold onto it. From terribly far away, he hears Carmilla's voice.

“Tsk. Like a kitten.”

He's vaguely aware of being lifted with cold arms – with her strength, Hector supposes she has no trouble carrying him. When he opens his eyes again, he's inside, looking up at the low rafters of a bedroom.

“It's well appointed, don't you think? If a little rustic.”

She deposits him on a soft rug that smells of smoke and blood. He looks around, but there are no bodies he could work with – only a bed and a tub of water, blessedly steaming. Carmilla ties his chain around the bedpost and perches on a pile of quilts.

“Undress,” she tells him.

He hesitates. “I... I don't think...”

She rises from the bed and kicks him in one smooth motion, and he screams as her foot hits his cracked rib.

“Don't be difficult,” she snaps. “You might be used to abusing the indulgence of a mad old man. My patience has limits.”

Hector drags himself off the ground, one hand pressed tight to his chest.

“Don't looks so pitiful, either. My attaches took the trouble of drawing you a bath. Once you're clean, you can have something to eat. You must be...” She pauses to lick a speck of blood off her lip. “Famished.”

His hands shake so hard he tears the fabric of his jacket – it's ruined anyhow, after days of being dragged through the mud. She watches him peel it off with catlike intensity, her eyes flicking over his body as he starts to work on his boots and trousers. His feet have bled more than he'd thought, and his chest is a mass of bruises. The collar is locked by means he can't fathom, but the skin beneath it must be even worse.

Finally, naked, he looks up at Carmilla. She sighs. “Do I have to tell you to get in the bath?”

There's a sharp reply on his tongue, but he can't make himself speak – too parched or too nervous, maybe both. His throat feels like it's been torn apart and patched with cheap glue. He crawls to the tub and manages a few sips of the nearly scalding water before Carmilla gathers the chain and pulls him in.

“It must feel good, doesn't it?”

Hector nods to keep her happy. He's sure there will be a price for this, but it can hardly be worse than the last few days. The hot water on his bruises is bliss and on his blisters is agony. He bites his lip to stay silent through both.

“You have lovely hair.” She seems fine keeping up this one-sided conversation. It makes him feel like a toy, being poised and coddled by a temperamental child. Is that what she is? He's never learned to read the moods of anything but animals, except fear and anger, which are easy enough to see in humans.

He keeps still and lets her wash his hair – _lets_ , as though he could stop her. If she hadn't used those same hands to beat him bloody, it would feel extraordinary. But his body has learned to fear her. It shudders without his permission, and his heart quickens. He shivers when a hand slips down his collar to stroke his body.

“Is this where you... hold me down and ravish me?” he asks. If he says it – like a joke – maybe he'll feel like he has some control over what happens. Maybe it won't feel as humiliating if she does.

“Do you want me to?” she purrs.

“Most people don't fuck their pets.”

Carmilla gives one of her chilly court-etiquette laughs. Then – god, her reflexes, they're more unheimlich than her fangs – she drags him out onto the floor, pinning his hips with her thighs and his wrists above his head. The collar digs into his neck unmercifully.

“That wasn't an answer.”

This is only flesh, he tells himself. He has seen flesh in all its layers and all its states of decay. Controlling flesh is his work. But he can't control his body's violent shaking or its delirious adrenalin high.

“I don't.” His voice cracks. “Please don't.”

He can't be this weak, to be broken simply by touch. He tries to go slack and let her continue. Maybe she'll treat him better if she can have him. It won't hurt as much as the beating. It might not hurt at all. His body won't listen.

“I could feed from you first,” she says. “Leave you... pliant, docile. You could remember it like a fever dream.”

“I'm – I'm begging you, don't.” He can't breathe. “I'll do anything you want, please just – just don't _touch_ me...”

Carmilla runs her hand across him one last, lingering time. Then she slips off him and straightens her dress. “If you say so.” She watches with cruel amusement as he sits up and tries to cover himself. “Maybe one day you'll feel differently.”

She leaves without feeding him and doesn't return for hours. He's starving but grateful, because it means she doesn't see him sob.

***

The nights blur into each other. Sometimes he rides with Carmilla, dressed in the clothes of some poor soul that she's eaten. Sometimes he offends her and she leaves him to stumble behind her on a broken ankle, trying to figure out what he's done. Slowly he learns when she wants silence or conversation, and when he talks, what she wants him to talk about: the taxonomy of night creatures he'll make her, her betrayal (always _victory_ , when he says it out loud) at Braila, her cunning on the war council.

And when he succeeds in making her smile, sometimes he wonders how this education would feel if he were doing it voluntarily, with someone who returned the favor. Perhaps that's what humans refer to as love.

If Carmilla could trick him into thinking she respected him, he can fool Carmilla into thinking he loves her. At least until Styria.

***

Hector can barely walk by the time they reach Carmilla's estate, and his face has healed with faint lines from her claws – he knows because she puts him in front of a mirror and tells him, with a hint of cruel sympathy, that he is still beautiful. But he can think of something besides pain and hunger again, and she seems to trust him. She produces his hammer, nicked from the castle before their flight, and he doesn't have to feign his joy at holding it again.

Carmilla's palace is cramped and threadbare and smells pervasively of mildewed straw, not that Hector would dare say any of that. His new forge is a repurposed storeroom attached to an austere servant's quarters. The guards lock his chain to a weight that he can shift by inches – it gives him the full breadth of his new home, while still reminding him that he's a prisoner.

There's a dead cat in the corner, curled behind some foul-smelling barrels. Hector kneels and turns it over, admiring the neat white blaze above its rotted nose. He scoops it up and limps to the forge table, but as he touches the hammer, he thinks better of raising a creature that Carmilla will know he cares for. He pets its cold body for a few minutes anyway, weighing the chances that Carmilla planted it deliberately, hoping he would create leverage for her to work with.

No. If he lets himself become paranoid, it will drain the little courage he has left.

Carmilla shows up the next night – he assumes night, although the forge is windowless – with a guard and a corpse.

“Are you comfortable, pet?”

She runs her hand over his face, and by now he's learned never to turn away.

“Yes.” Compared to the past weeks, it's true.

“Are you ready to prove that you're still good for something?”

Hector looks at the body that they've rolled in. Young, female, pallid – exsanguinated, it seems. Freshly dead. Uninjured, except for one side of her smooth neck, where the skin is savagely torn away. He glances up at Carmilla.

“Well, I don't just _have_ corpses lying around,” she tells him. “That will change soon enough.”

He doesn't enjoy working with spectators, but he wouldn't dare ask Carmilla to leave. So he raises the hammer, and for a moment he can forget the chains and the storeroom and imagine he's back at the castle, waiting for Isaac to summon him to a meeting, or Cezar to jump into his arms. Chosen by Dracula to remake the human race, respected – beloved – even more than the great man's own peers. Wearing a decent fucking suit. Not living with the knowledge that he probably damned them all by accident.

The light of his hammer fades, and he hears it hit the table.

“Well?”

He tries to pick it up and start again, but he can't see clearly through his tears. He closes his eyes and rests his hands on the table, trying to get control of himself.

“I'm sorry,” he whispers. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

Carmilla thinks he's apologizing to her. She still breaks his left hand's fingers as punishment for his failure.

***

His attempt the next night goes better, despite the agony of his hand; Carmilla praises him for his fortitude, as though she hadn't been the one to hurt him. Her guard leads the newly made ghoul away, and Hector wonders how the night creatures feel about captivity. He's never worried too much before – Dracula was merciful, after all, and his cause was just. But now he feels keenly what it's like to be owned.

Carmilla watches him closely at first. Then she disappears, and after a few days of idleness a guard returns with a heaping barrow of corpses. Some still wear pieces of armor. So she's at war. Maybe she'll have less time to torment him.

Hector forges each of them in succession, watching their eyes bulge and their muscles twist as he gives them new life. When the guard gets bored and begins scratching lewd patterns on the stone, he leans close and whispers his commands.

He can't trust his creatures with a plan; too much could go wrong if they acted on their own. So he only makes sure they'll obey him before anyone else. Carmilla could dispatch one, maybe two, easily. But when he has made her an army, he will only have to somehow join her on the battlefield – and they will turn.

He could get a creature to overpower the guard now, perhaps cut his chain, but he doesn't know what's waiting outside. And if he makes it halfway out, only to be caught by Carmilla... No, he'll have to be near her, and she'll have to die first.

It's ironic. She's lost interest just when he needs her close.

The next batch of bodies are softer and better-dressed. Carmilla has taken a town, then – with her own troops, probably, since he can't have made more than a score of his own monsters. It's unsettling to make soldiers without knowing Carmilla's designs for them, but her aims seem... low. Paltry. Some small measure of respect from a bickering clutch of undead royalty, and a pool of subjects to torment, as she's tormented Hector.

Most of them probably deserve it, and Hector feels his customary pity for the few that don't; any animal would be better off dead than suffering under her. Maybe they would say the same about him, chained and broken in a dungeon. At least, he thinks, he hasn't resigned himself to servitude.

Hector sends the guard away with his handiwork and drags the chain's weight to his quarters. He has water enough to bathe before someone reappears with his next meal, and someone has left clean clothes on his pallet. He eases off his gore-stained shirt and trousers, careful of his swollen hand and aching foot.

“Why, Hector – you look almost like the man I met in Dracula's castle.”

Hector nearly falls against the bed. Carmilla is watching him from the door, one hand toying with her hair.

“Confident, purposeful. _Powerful._ Soon, no one will stand against us when we take what is ours.”

“Ours?” he says carefully.

“Of course!” She must be blood-drunk; her skin looks nearly human. “On every side, I have found myself surrounded by fools and dotards. You, and you _alone_ , have not disappointed me.”

“I thought I was a puppy.”

“And why would you ever think that?”

She rewrites their past like this constantly to erase her cruelty, he's realized. He's learned to keep two versions of the last month: the one he remembers, and the one she expects him to believe.

“I – I don't know,” he says. “But you couldn't have come here just to compliment me.”

Carmilla laughs. “Perceptive. I want you to see your handiwork, Hector. I want you to understand what a beautiful thing you've built. And I want to settle any doubts you have about my plans. I may be no Tepes, Hector. But my cause is as worthy as any.”

She sounds like she did when they first met: charming, ingratiating. Manipulative.

She sounds like weakness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Until I began writing this I didn't grasp just how awful everything around forgemasters must smell. Or that Hector is well-spoken for someone who seems to have spent his adolescence hanging out alone with animal corpses. Or that _dear lord_ that whole forgemaster uniform looks uncomfortable. Skintight pants and boots, giant scratchy collar, sash that must get caught on everything...


	3. In the Darkness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter where all the bad things happen, even by the standards set in the past two installments.

Carmilla has a servant splint and bandage Hector's hand and ankle before they go – a real splint, not the clumsy wraps he's been making. It nearly lets him climb the stairs without pain, at least for a while, because there are so _many_ stairs. Carmilla keeps him steady when he nearly falls.

“Almost there,” she tells him.

“Almost where?”

She doesn't answer, and they climb another flight. Then she opens a wrought-iron door, revealing the glow of moonlight.

“Almost _here_.”

Outside is a stone pavilion built high above the ground. It must have gleamed once; now, like everything else here, it looks secondhand and carelessly maintained. A few pieces of the low walls have crumbled, and the ground is stained with weather. But at the far end, Hector sees salvation. Some dozen of his creatures wait patiently in neat formation, watching them with glowing eyes.

“They look extraordinary in the night, don't they?” Carmilla asks.

“Yes.” Hector takes a deep breath and tries to believe his luck. “Can we get closer?”

“Of course.” She takes his hand, and together, they approach his horde.

Hector barely feels his foot. He barely feels anything, except his heart hammering his chest. He lets himself imagine the shock on Carmilla's face when she realizes her fatal mistake.

He's leading her now, gauging the distance to the door, whether she might be able to retreat in time. His creatures can cut her off, and she'll be utterly alone – he doubts any guards will even hear her scream.

Finally, they reach the formation. Hector squeezes Carmilla's hand, holding her as best he can. He closes his eyes for a moment to be sure this isn't a dream, and then he speaks:

“Kill her.”

The devils surge into motion, dark muscles rippling in the moonlight. Then something goes wrong.

A spray of blood cuts the air, and one of his creatures stumbles. It strains to reach Carmilla, but the spray becomes a gout, and the flesh of its outstretched arm sloughs off the bone and droops winglike from its shoulder.

The rest have fared no better. Some gape at him from shredded faces, others buckle as the muscles strip from their legs. Some are little more than islands of flesh in a spreading pool of gore. Slowly and then all at once, his little army falls to pieces in front of him, shrouded in bloody mist.

“Oh, Hector,” says Carmilla. “Did you think you'd learned subterfuge? That's adorable.”

He pulls his hand free and limps across the battle line. One of the creatures is still trying to crawl, as though held by unseen chains. Hector kneels beside it.

“Stop it,” he says, aware of the rising panic in his voice.

The devil goes still. When Hector lifts one of its arms to examine, something stings his fingers. He follows it along a vicious cut, and then into the open air. Fine wire, he realizes, nearly invisible and deadly sharp. The creatures are wrapped in it, leashed to the low wall. Following his order, they'd pulled it taut – and torn themselves apart.

He looks back at Carmilla. She's smiling.

“Really, Hector. What kind of idiot would capture a forgemaster, force him to build an army of hellspawn, and not expect him to betray her at the first possible opportunity?”

Hector draws his trembling hand back before he cuts himself too badly on the wire. He considers making a run for the wall and jumping – he wouldn't survive the fall, but it might be better than whatever's coming to him. But even that choice is denied as she grabs the end of his leash.

“You don't have the instincts of a predator. You don't have the cat's skill of putting its paw where the mouse is going to run. I will always anticipate your plans, because your options are those of a mouse trapped in a corner. And even that's too much freedom, it seems.”

He waits for her to hit him. She only keeps smiling.

“You need to learn that you are helpless, Hector. You need to understand that you are prey. And we clearly need to teach you.”

_We..._

“Guards!”

The door behind them opens. So she wouldn't have fought alone after all, even if his plan had worked. Of course.

“Take him to the cells.”

***

There are places lower than the forge. A pair of guards drag him down, kick his ribs when he falls, laugh when he retches sour bile. The air chills and dampens, and their torch barely illuminates the darkness.

Hector misjudges the end of the stairs and hits the floor, shielding his face from slimy stone. How far underground must they be? The hall is little more than a tunnel; they've just arrived, but he feels already like it's running out of air. If there's any consolation, it's that the guards seem almost as uneasy as he does.

“We really gotta take him all the way down?” says one of them – male, lightly accented, a little querulous.

“Fucking course we do. You afraid of ghosts or something?” The other is female, her aging voice like gravel in her throat.

The man kicks Hector resentfully. “Can we at least strip him here?”

“Sure, why the fuck not.”

The man grabs Hector's chain. Hector struggles to his knees and tries to breathe, and when the man bends close, Hector throws a fist at him in desperation. The man dodges him easily and holds him still.

“Relax,” the woman drawls. “Unless you wanna go in with even more bruises than you've got.”

She rips his shirt open with a knife, letting the point drag across his skin. Hector is shaking now, from the cold and from fear. She bares his chest and pushes him to the ground so she can cut away his trousers. The man holds the torch and leers.

“Just do the fucking work,” the woman tells him, grabbing Hector's hair painfully so she can pull his shirt off. “Dunno what you'd want with him, anyway. He looks like a fucking kid.”

The man laughs. “I can work with that.”

“Work with it fucking later.”

The woman yanks Hector upright by his hair, bringing tears to his eyes. He staggers forward, stumbling so often that she puts an arm around his waist to support him.

“Just a few more minutes,” she says. “And you aren't gonna need to walk for a long time.”

He has too much time to think about what that might mean.

The cells are dark and empty, and the guards ignore them. The hallway narrows until Hector can hardly stand, and they stop before a low, iron door – barely more than a crawlspace. The woman removes a heavy bar and opens it.

“Go on,” she says.

Hector doesn't move. She kicks his feet from under him and forces him inside.

The guards bar the door. Their footsteps retreat. He is trapped alone and naked in the darkness, curled in a space whose walls and ceiling he can feel just by stretching his arms. He closes his eyes and sees exactly as much as he did before.

His parents had locked him in the cellar sometimes, before their demise. A larger space, especially for a child, but just as dark. After a few punishments he found that the important thing was not to hate them. Hatred could burn bright and keep him warm for a few hours, but it had nowhere to expand in his prison. It could only consume him and flicker out, leaving despair.

He had trained himself in the anticipation of hatred instead. And when he was back in the open air, he had given the fire form and let it char them to bones.

But when they were dead, and their house laid in ashes, he had realized that there might be no end to it – that he might burn forever with the hatred, if he let it.

Dracula burned, and he is dead.

Isaac burned, and he is dead.

Hector removed himself from humanity and believed he was above the feeling – only a merciful, dispassionate executioner. He assumed that made him humble, but perhaps he was the most arrogant of them all. And god how he has suffered for it.

How he _will_ suffer for it.

***

Hector loses track of time – maybe quickly, but how could he say? His legs cramp, and the cramp deepens into a muscle-deep itch, until he can barely think of anything else. Then his thirst overtakes the itch, and hunger follows, and the stale air leaves him gasping.

Sometimes he drifts to sleep and wakes in terror and screams, just to hear his own voice. He runs his hands over his arms and legs to remind himself that he has a body, and when that's not enough he squeezes his splinted fingers or bandaged ankle to cut through all his other pain.

Footsteps echo in the hallway. Hector ignores them; he began hallucinating sounds some time ago. But this time they come with light and motion. One guard opens the door and another pulls Hector out, his muscles seizing and his eyes searing in the torchlight.

One of them splashes a bucket of freezing water on him. He drinks what he can, sucking it off the locks of his hair and lapping at the floor – like a dog, Carmilla would say if she were here. He's lightheaded with relief until he realizes that the guards have cleaned him for their benefit, not his.

They pin him to the floor, and unlike Carmilla, they don't stop when he begs. The collar's edge slams into his jaw over and over. He keeps his eyes open the whole time, because seeing anything at all is a luxury, even if it's only a stone wall that's blurry through his tears.

When the guards are finished they kick him back into the cell. Neither one has said a word.

He cries until his eyes hurt as badly as the rest of him.

They come back again, just as Hector's memories of them are fading. This time he only begs them to talk, asks them questions, insults them, anything that will break the sounds of flesh and heavy breathing. Finally one of them knocks his head against the ground, and he shuts up.

The guards seem to take pleasure in hurting him after that – they pull his collar's chain while they fuck him, or twist his arm behind his back and grab his fingers until he screams. While they're doing it he wishes they would leave him alone, and when they leave he wishes they would come back. He's stopped even bothering to ask how much longer he'll be down here. 

One brutal session leaves him too hurt to even sit up. He lies curled on the ground and thinks. For all he knows Carmilla has forgotten about him. The guards have given him no food since he arrived, and barely any water. They're going to torture and rape him while he dies by inches – unless he robs his death from them.

Pushing back his fear, he tears at one wrist with his teeth. The skin is sour and gummy; when it breaks, his mouth fills with the coppery sweetness of blood and he gags. His arm is too slick to get purchase again, and he's too dizzy to lift the other wrist and bite. As he drifts unconscious, he wonders if that means it's working.

But the door opens and the guards pull him out again. They wash the blood off his face while he cries bitterly, and one appears with a bandage to wrap up his arm. He's too weak to even struggle while they do it.

At least they don't fuck him this time.

They gag him and cuff his wrists, though, before they leave.

He might as well be dead – shut in a tomb, speechless and motionless. The hallucinations return, and he can't cover his ears or drown them out. A voice – sometimes Dracula's, sometimes Carmillla's, sometimes his father's – lists everything he's ever done wrong. It takes millennia.

The guards don't come back. Maybe they're planning to, and time has just slowed again. Or maybe they're punishing him for a suicide attempt by killing him.

When his throat starts to burn, he can't even lick the moisture from the walls. He cries without tears now, just silent sobs and a tightness in his chest, as though his misery has gotten too large and is trying to burst free.

This could be hell.

This must be hell.

He assumes he is hallucinating the clack of the door and the light of a torch. And the soft, cold hands drawing him out of his prison. And a voice, familiar and imperious:

“Oh, Hector – darling. You look positively dead.”

***

Hector only remembers pieces after that. Excruciating pain as he stretches his arms and legs. A blur when his eyes focus on anything farther than his own hands. Keeping down a few sips of broth at a time, the feeling of food in his stomach alien and unpleasant.

When he's lucid and his body has started to feel like his own again, he realizes he's back at the forge quarters in his own bed, still naked beneath a worn blanket. His chain is tethered to a bedpost, but he doubts he could move more than a few steps anyway.

Carmilla arrives.

“I've heard your recovery is going well.”

Hector nods, not trusting himself to talk, let alone avoid saying something that might offend her. She doesn't seem to mind, only perches next to him and runs fingers through his freshly washed hair.

“It's getting long,” she says. “I'll have someone in to cut it – it framed your face so much better the old way.”

Maybe this will be their entire conversation: pleasantries about his health, until he locks his torture away in the past that never happened.

Then she draws her hand away. “Hector,” she says. “Do you know why I sent you to the cells?”

When he nods again, she slaps him, squarely hitting one of his fading bruises. He shakes his head, heart pounding.

“Of course you don't. You think it was a punishment. When really, it was a gift.” She looks straight into his eyes, and he wonders if vampires can truly hypnotize their prey. “You might have suffered so much for so long, learning your place here. Now... it's all behind you. Do your work – the work you _love_ – and I promise: you will never have to suffer again.”

Even now, he can tell when she's lying. But he hasn't heard a voice in so long. As long as she doesn't leave him in the dark again, he'll believe whatever she wants.

“How do you feel about that?”

He tries to speak, but his throat is too raw. She puts a finger to his lips.

“It's all right,” she says. “I'm sure you're just thinking of a way to show your gratitude.”

She throws his blanket off and slides her body onto his, their faces nearly touching. For a moment he thinks she's going to kiss him. Then she lowers her teeth to his neck, just below the collar, and he flinches as her fangs punch neat holes into his skin.

“Don't worry, puppy,” she whispers in his ear. “I'll make sure this feels good for you, too.”

If she notices the tears on his face when she begins to touch him, she doesn't mention it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've written faster than I expected, so I decided I might as well post early. This bit is somehow even more depressing than I thought. At least it gets better quickly after this.
> 
> It took me forever to come up with the monofilament wire, because Carmilla doesn't strike me as a person who keeps high-tech demolition devices on hand. It required some artistic license but then this is a series where you can precisely tear somebody's eye out with a whip. I'll accept it.
> 
> This chapter is the source of the "no cute zombie pets" tag, by the way: it became obvious where the story was going, and I didn't want to have to write Carmilla killing a puppy. I'm not _that_ much of a monster.


	4. Under the Moonlight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An unexpected visitor arrives at the palace.

There's no shortage of corpses when Hector returns to the forge.

A guard brings the bodies in barrows and arranges them on the table, since Hector is too weak to lift them. Hector raises his creatures and sends them off, taking just enough time to press a hand to their face and welcome them to this world. _I'm sorry_ , he thinks, each time.

He doesn't say it out loud. If he's silent the guards are less likely to bother him, and he'll meet the quotas that Carmilla has set him, and she'll make sure that nobody is allowed to hurt him but her. When he's finished he can bathe and eat – simple food, but enough to keep him alive. He'll soak the stiff, crooked fingers of his left hand and rewrap the bandages compressing his ankle, wondering if he'll ever be able to walk without limping.

Not that it really matters. His world is dim and small, and there's nothing to do but stand at the forge table or lie in bed. Carmilla has taken him outside occasionally when she's pleased with him, supporting his weight while they stand under the stars for a few precious minutes. She hasn't done it lately; the last time he made the mistake of thinking about what Styria might look like by daylight, and she saw him crying and beat him for his ungratefulness.

He knows he will never see the sun again.

***

The guard is impatient today, and Hector is exhausted; Carmilla slipped into his room late the night before. He leans heavily on the table as he waits for a new body.

“Her ladyship keeping you busy, I guess.”

The guard has his eyes on Hector's neck. They all know she feeds from him, and they can probably guess she fucks him. He suspects she does it because she knows it makes him hate himself, which isn't to say she doesn't enjoy it – what was it he said, once, about there being joy in a cat toying with its food? He remembers Isaac's reply well enough: _not for the food._

Hector pushes himself upright as the guard brings the last corpse, but he's too slow to avoid colliding with it and falling to the floor.

“Oh get the fuck up,” the man snaps, giving Hector's chain a spiteful pull. “I'll take the rest while you're finishing this one.”

It's a reprieve, at least. Hector catches his breath and picks up the hammer, holding it to the corpse. He's gotten better at working through his pain, and his creatures have become stronger and more dexterous – more like their infernal forebearers. This one has an eerily human grin and the overlarge eyes of a deep-sea monster. He dodges its fledgling swipes and touches its smooth, cool skin. How much could he have accomplished with it in Dracula's army? Now he will have a few minutes to pretend it's not going to help Carmilla's cause.

He has more than a few minutes.

The creature calms, and Hector slumps to the ground, waiting. He keeps watching the door, but the guard doesn't reappear. Hector starts counting the minutes. The minutes turn into one hour, then two.

It could be another test – leaving him alone to see if he disobeys her. But if that were true, she'd have left him with more work; she needs him forging at all hours now. Something is wrong.

Hector gets stiffly to his feet. The creature is standing at the ready, eyes running along the length of his chain as it catches the light. If there will ever be a time to escape, it's now.

The safe thing is to stay, hoping she doesn't beat him to death in a blind rage one day, or decide her forces are sufficient and he's a liability – if she could capture a pet forgemaster to build her army, so can someone else. Or... he can tell the creature to rend his chain. Knowing that Carmilla might catch him, and she will doubtlessly find even more excruciating tortures if she does.

Hector closes his good hand around his hammer. If she takes him, it won't be alive.

***

Stairs are torture enough. His creature can help steady him, but he can only rely on it so much – he needs it ready to fight when they meet resistance.

The resistance doesn't show, and as they creep up the stairwell, Hector smells the tang of blood. He follows and nearly slips on a pool of it. One of Carmilla's guards has lost an arm, judging by the sleeve on the severed limb in its center.

This must be part of her war. Another general must have breached the palace. Hector wonders if it's someone he'd recognize. Maybe he can throw himself on their mercy, because they can't possibly be worse than Carmilla... has he really become so timid that his first thought is surrender?

He stops. Something is loping toward them; he hears the scratch of claws on stone and the beating of wings. One of his creations, he supposes. He can work with that – 

The thing that rounds the corner is a night creature. But not one of his.

Hector freezes as the creature slows its run. It stalks a half-circle around him, examining him with red eyes. When it doesn't attack, Hector puts a hesitant hand out to touch it. It's real, and it's Isaac's. Which means one thing:

Dracula is alive.

Maybe this is a survivor of the battle at Braila. Maybe Isaac is still with him forging a new army. Why is it here? Maybe Dracula has come to kill Hector. Maybe Dracula doesn't know about Hector's treachery and has come to save him. Maybe he does know, but is magnanimous enough to forgive him. Or maybe Hector is entirely incidental, and Dracula is simply here to kill his rival. It doesn't matter.

The creature gives Hector one last look and scrambles up the stairs. Hector follows.

He's not fast enough to keep up, even with his own companion for support. But the path only leads one place: Carmilla's rooftop pavilion. It's a strange move, but maybe she's been backed into a corner, making a last stand against Dracula. Will she already be dead by the time Hector reaches them? Hector reminds himself that he is supposed to be the merciful one, so he ought to hope she's met a quick end, however many times he's fantasized otherwise.

His ankle gives out at the top of the stairs. Hector clings to his creature and half-crawls to the open door. He looks up.

No. This is all wrong.

There's no Dracula on the pavilion. It's only Isaac, poised inside a moat of devil corpses and a ring of Carmilla's soldiers. And Carmilla is not dead. She's laughing.

Isaac's night creature leaps for Carmilla's throat. One of the soldiers spears it, and Carmilla rips its head from its body, tossing it into the rest of Isaac's fallen army. Hector is just close enough to see a familiar amusement on her face.

He should leave now. Carmilla is distracted, and he's never seen Isaac lose a fight. Even if this one is unwinnable, by the time it concludes and Carmilla realizes Hector has escaped, he'll be long gone.

But he can't stand the thought of betraying Isaac twice. He drops his creature's arm and braces himself against the doorway and gives it a last command:

“Go.”

***

His devil is smart – if it's the last work Hector ever does, at least he can be proud of that. It skirts the edge of Carmilla's circle, staying just out of her soldiers' reach as it screams into the night. Two of them break the circle and lunge for it, but it dodges them and swipes one across the face. Blood. Scream. Fall.

The other returns the attack, but his creature doesn't even flinch at the wound. It falls back and rounds the circle again, aiming at the other side.

This time one of them gets a real slash in. The creature stumbles. Another soldier seizes on its weakness. In a moment the fight is over, and the fleeting life that Hector has given its body is extinguished.

But it's done enough. Isaac springs through the gap as the night creature falls. He flicks his spiked strap around the neck of the isolated soldier and pulls: blood, scream, fall.

Isaac is outnumbered now, but he isn't surrounded. He moves through their ranks like a well-placed chess piece, snapping one after another to the ground. Hector feels a twinge of what he mistakes for jealousy before identifying it as shame. Isaac wouldn't have ended up collared and begging for mercy in the dirt at Braila.

Carmilla's formation is in disarray now, but she hasn't joined the fight. Instead, she bends a knee to examine Hector's creature. Then she looks up – straight at the door.

Hector doesn't have the time or reflexes to hide. She crosses the pavilion in an instant and hauls him out by his chain, while he clutches at his neck and tries to breathe. Her first blow hits a bruised rib, and he chokes back a cry. She leans down to whisper in his ear.

“Humans are embarrassingly predictable,” she says. “You know? 'Oh, I'll chase the vampire up this mysterious tower, which I'm sure doesn't open onto an enclosed location crawling with soldiers.' But you... you, I wasn't expecting. Does the puppy have teeth now?”

The hammer is just in reach behind him, and Carmilla is enjoying her taunts too much to notice him feeling for it. As she raises a fist to hit him again, he swings it with all his strength into her side.

Carmilla stops, and Hector gets to see a brief, pained grimace cross her face. Then she tears the hammer from his grip.

“Have you ever fought with this before? No, it's for raising monsters and dead pets, I suppose. Pity, because it's weighted nicely – ”

She brings it down against his ribs, and this time he screams in agony.

“What do you suppose I can do with two forgemasters, Hector? Will your friend take a little longer to break?” She punctuates the question with a slap to his face. “Oh – not your friend, is he? After Braila, he must be _very_ angry with you.” 

Hector tries to pull free, but she's much too strong for that and where would he go, anyway? Hector might have believed that Dracula would grant him mercy. He's not foolish enough to expect the same from Isaac. Struggling for breath, he turns his head to get a glimpse of the pavilion. The screams have thinned, and there aren't many soldiers standing anymore, it seems. He's watching Isaac drive his fingers into someone's eyes when he realizes that Carmilla is watching too.

And that for all her bravado, she cannot possibly beat Isaac alone. She's going to run. Or at least, she's going to try.

When Carmilla slaps him again, Hector doesn't flinch. He grabs her cold wrist with his good hand, as he hooks her leg with his good ankle and holds them together. She kicks at him, but he's taken so much pain by now that it barely registers. He pours his last, little strength into keeping her on the ground with him.

His nose is bloodied, and his limbs are leaden. He's not going to win any fights like this. But he doesn't need to. He only has to slow her down.

Isaac is closer, running, eyes hard. Carmilla pauses her struggle, looks down at Hector, and gives him a feral grin.

“Clever prey.”

She bashes his head against the stone so hard that his vision whites. Hector grits his teeth and holds on, but she frees her wrist and does it again. She starts rising to her feet, and he's just conscious enough to wrap his arms around her neck. His eyes find hers. His voice still works somehow – even if he can only mumble the words:

“I am _not_ prey.”

Carmilla slashes an arm with her claws and when his grip weakens she rips him from her with inhuman strength. The world tips and lightens as she flings him sideways, the feeling of defying gravity almost euphoric. Then his back slams into the pavilion wall, whipping his head to follow. Something gives, and for a moment he thinks she's thrown him so hard he's disintegrating.

No. Not him.

The wall.

The aging mortar powders under the strain. The bricks buckle behind him. Momentum sends them over the edge. It takes Hector with them.

Hector slips halfway over the newly lowered wall, barely catching the stone. He can't feel his hands, and the thought of pulling himself back feels inconceivably ambitious. It's so much easier to accept that he is going to die – another long, blissful fall, and then no more body to hurt or mind to break.

As long as he can see Carmilla die first.

Isaac has cut her off now. Hector has never truly seen her fight before, he realizes. Her strikes have none of Isaac's grace, only a swift and brutal weight that looks wrong on her slender frame. One staggers Isaac, and Hector's heart nearly stops. But Isaac recovers and ducks her next blow. Not like a mouse shrinking from a cat. Like a rat, evading a paw and sinking teeth into fur. Or studded leather into skin.

After all of it, Hector finally gets to hear Carmilla scream. Once.

Her arm is a flayed scarlet sleeve, her dress black with its blood. She's still on her feet somehow, swiping at Isaac and forcing him back. If Isaac can stay between her and the door, though, it will take only time to wear her down, and then Hector can finally drop this agonizing hold on the wall – 

No.

Carmilla looks back conspicuously toward Hector, leading Isaac's gaze. She says something he can't hear, and Hector prays for Isaac to ignore it and keep fighting because what could Isaac possibly gain from saving the man who betrayed Dracula if not to give him a more hideous death...

No.

_No._

Hector tries to drop before Isaac can let her past. But the idea of not knowing she's dead bothers him even more than the notion of dying.

Isaac hesitates. And in a moment Carmilla is gone.

Hector's eyes bloom with tears that he can't wipe away. His vision is so blurry that Isaac approaches in triplicate, gripping Hector with too many arms and drawing him to safety.

“...not prey,” Hector mumbles, his voice cracking. “I'm not... prey...”

He curls against the ground, trying to ease the stabbing of his ribs. Behind him, he hears Isaac pull his chain off the wall and coil it neatly beside him.

“I never said you were.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Carmilla: does sort of a few of the things Dracula does, but backwards and in heels.
> 
> I'm anticipating the last chapter somewhere between one day and one week from now. What I lose in dramatic Carmilla monologues will be regained in dramatic Isaac monologues.


	5. Until the End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Comfort is had. Futures are discussed.

Hector's face is cool against the ground. He closes his eyes and lets the chill soothe the agony in his skull, which feels like it's suddenly become too small for his brain.

“Do not sleep.”

Isaac lifts him against the wall gently. Hector wipes the tears from his eyes, but he still can't see clearly. He tips his head back and looks at the night sky.

“Your body wants to die,” Isaac tells him. “If you stop fighting, you will let it.”

Hector tries to sort through the events of the past few minutes. He's missing some vital revelation, some understanding of what is going to happen. Finally, it comes to him:

“Are you going to kill me now?”

He's too exhausted to put any fear in his voice. But Isaac seems taken aback.

“Hector, I have just saved your life, at significant cost. What possible reason would I have to kill you?”

Hector's head clears just enough to remember.

“Because I betrayed you... both of you. Didn't you know...”

Isaac sighs. “Not until now, for certain. But I had guessed. It took a great deal of cleansing before I atoned for it.”

“Atoned...”

“If I had followed your wishes and befriended you, perhaps I would have realized what a gullible idiot you are.”

Hector tries to close his eyes again, and Isaac shakes him awake. The stars are fading, but it will be hours until daylight – if there still is such a thing, since it's been so long that Hector has nearly forgotten what it looks like. He takes a deep breath and finds it a little easier to focus.

“But I – ”

Isaac cuts him off. “You deserve death. _Slow_ death,” he says. “Or you would, under ordinary circumstances. But here... it is possible you have suffered enough.”

Hector can only imagine how he looks right now. His clothes are filthy with dust, and one sleeve of his shirt is shredded and soaked with blood. The wrap on his hand has unraveled. His shoes must be somewhere on the forest floor outside. Or maybe Isaac sees deeper than that. Perhaps there's something intrinsic now that marks him as a broken man, fixed even firmer than the collar around his neck. And Isaac always was good at finding weakness.

“Then what are you going to do?”

“We will find Carmilla, and rest, and leave this accursed place. In whichever order is required. Can you walk?”

“Not remotely.”

“You are going to have to.”

“I know.”

_Walking_ is a charitable interpretation: Isaac bears Hector's weight as he takes light, uncertain steps against where he estimates the ground must be. It would probably be easier for Isaac to carry him, but Hector appreciates even this bare vote of confidence in his capabilities, after so long being treated like a broken toy.

As they reach the door, Hector stops.

“Is he really gone?” he asks.

Carmilla has lied to him about so much. Maybe the castle is somewhere past the horizon, and Dracula is waiting there, ready to forgive his prodigal son...

“Yes,” says Isaac. “I believe he is.”

There is no shred of doubt in his voice.

***

Carmilla's blood has marked a path that ends at the stables, and the horse she rode from Braila is gone. It must be a feint, Hector tries to explain – they've got to leave, they're in terrible danger here – but Isaac only leads him back inside. He finally unshoulders Hector on a divan in some little-used library, sweeping the books from a shelf and dragging it to the door.

“That won't stop her,” Hector tells him. “We've got to leave. She'll break it down, she'll burn it...”

“Hector!” The shelf hits the ground with a crack, and Isaac turns. “An hour on the road in your state would kill you. And Carmilla is a vampire. Not a god.”

For the first time since he reached the palace, Hector allows himself to consider that he might be safe. That there's nobody waiting to punish him for speaking out of turn, that if he goes to sleep right now he won't wake chained tight to the bed, pinned under someone else's weight. He realizes how much of himself he has forced out of his own mind, all the parts that would protest being beaten and humiliated and starved and caged...

The tears well in his eyes. He wipes them away, and then he realizes that Isaac must think he's upset at being told off, and then he tries to explain he's not _that_ pathetic but can't get the words out without sobbing, and then he gives up and only covers his face and cries, gulping air between sobs and drying his face with his unbloodied sleeve.

Until finally his sadness is just a hollow in his chest, and he notices that Isaac is on the divan beside him.

“You must think I'm... so weak.”

Isaac's expression is carefully blank. “I always have. But why do you say that now?”

“You were... owned. And you put your master's eyes with your thumbs.”

“Did Dracula tell you that?”

“It's common knowledge, isn't it? And that was... you. And then _this_ , and _her_ , and I tried to fight and god it _hurt_ and I just _let_ her...” The tears threaten to overwhelm him again. He stops to catch his breath, but as he starts to speak again, Isaac shakes his head.

“I will judge a man for many things. How he reconciles himself with slavery is not among them.” Isaac lays a hand on Hector's shoulder, on the bare skin just shy of the collar and Carmilla's bites. His touch is warm, alive – human. “You have done a great deal that requires regret,” he says. “Don't waste it on the things that have been done to you.”

Hector meets his eyes. “I don't know if I've ever seen you touch someone before.”

Isaac gives something, at least by his standards, like a smile. “I've never single-handedly stormed a vampire's castle before, either,” he says. Then he slips his hand up to draw back Hector's hair. “Besides, I need to get this collar off your neck. It may burn... a little.”

The heat of his forge knife burns more than a little. But when Isaac slides the collar off, Hector trembles with the sudden sense of freedom. He puts a hand to his neck, tracing the ring of bruises and calluses its edges have left in his skin.

“With proper care, they will heal,” Isaac says – as though Hector can think of anything so far in the future, beyond the sheer pleasure of breathing freely. “Now take your shirt off. I need to clean your arm.”

***

Isaac's skill at dressing the gouges in Hector's arm and shoulder is surprising, until Hector remembers that the man has probably treated countless self-inflicted wounds.

Despite the earlier reassurances, Hector flushes with shame when Isaac's eyes drift over the ragged scars on his forearm. Even if he heals, he'll have to live with the reminders of Carmilla's torture: the marks on his body, the aches in his bones. But he will heal, and he will live, Hector tells himself. He'll live to see her die, and then he'll find another lonely hovel and care for dead creatures who will demand nothing from him but his affection. If only fate allows it.

“Why did you come here?” he asks Isaac. “Revenge?”

Isaac pauses his slow process of tearing fabric to rewrap Hector's ankle. “To a point,” he says. “But I was more interested in the army Carmilla had acquired. An army of the night.... made by whom? I asked myself. Not precisely difficult to figure out.”

“You're saying you came for me.”

He cuts a slice of rotted velvet from the divan and stretches it. “It would seem that I am.”

“But why?”

“Because I have plans, Hector. I was naïve to trust in simplistic theories about a single species' monstrosity. I thought humans a scourge – but that property is not unique to them. No. _Power_ is what must be destroyed. In the hands of humans, the hands of vampires, the hands of everyone unfit to wield it. And I am not strong enough to do it alone.”

Hector's dreams of peace and loneliness start to crumble. He should have known better. “So you need a pet forgemaster,” he says, not bothering to hide the bitterness in his voice. “Just like Carmilla.”

He flinches as Isaac takes hold of his foot – if he's going to be a prisoner again, he should know better than to antagonize his captor. But Isaac only straightens Hector's ankle and begins to roll the cloth around its swollen, purpled skin.

“You misunderstand. I do not need another forgemaster to make my army. I do not need another general to help me command it. I will not force you to join me.” He pauses to tighten the wrap. “But I have seen what happens when a man decides to fight a war in isolation. And I do not wish to die mad and alone.”

“Isaac, I'm part of the _reason_ Dracula died!”

“A small part. Don't flatter yourself.”

“I'm still the last person you ought to trust.”

“And yet you are the only one I can. Will you hold this?” He places Hector's hand on the end of one makeshift bandage as he readies the next. “A great man has left this coil, and of all the humans in it, only we understand what has been lost. In a better world, perhaps I would not have chosen you to bear the burden of that loss with me. In this one... here we are. Alone. Together.”

Isaac finishes the work in silence.

“Make your choice, and I will respect it. But make it later. For now, rest,” he says. “I will wake you soon.”

Hector resists for a minute; Carmilla has told him he cries when he's sleeping, and he doesn't want Isaac to pity or despise him even more. But his exhaustion has only been kept in check by pain, and the worst of that has abated. Almost without realizing it, he curls on the divan and closes his eyes.

A gentle weight covers his bare shoulders. It's Isaac's jacket, damp with the sweat of his fight, but warm nonetheless. Hector hasn't been warm in so long. So, so long.

“Isaac,” he mumbles, on the cusp of unconsciousness. “Will you... touch me... again?”

Even half-senseless, he's ready for derision or a sharp rebuke. Instead, he feels a callused hand against his cheekbone – one that's caused so much hurt, but not right now, and not to him.

“Yes,” says Isaac, as Hector finally drifts to sleep. “It is productive, I think. That we be... friends.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Isaac seems like a person who would have a strong grasp of the nature of structural inequality and a solution that involves killing everyone. So... happy ending! That implicitly leads to a huge, bloody war, because writing anything happy involving Hector and Isaac is weird like that.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who's read/commented; I've enjoyed writing this a lot.


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